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New Records Available To Search This Findmypast Friday, March 4, 2016

This week’s Findmypast Friday marks the release of over 10 million Irish Catholic Parish Registers. Spanning over 200 years of Ireland’s history from 1671-1900, the registers contain over 40 million names from over 1,000 parishes and cover 97% of the entire island of Ireland, both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms contains over 7 million records. This is the first time that National Library of Ireland’s collection of Catholic Registers has been fully indexed with images to the original documents linked online. The records can now be searched by name, allowing you the opportunity to make all important links between generations with the baptism records and between families with the marriage registers.

Each record contains a transcript of the original document that will reveal your ancestor’s birth place, birth date, parents’ name, residence and the date and location of their baptism. Each transcript also contains a link to a scanned image of the original document on the National Library of Ireland’s website.

Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Marriages contains over 3 million marriage records. The collection has been indexed for the first time from the National Library of Ireland’s microfilm collection and is a vital resource for searching for ancestors before the introduction of compulsory civil registration for Catholics in 1864.

For each record, you will find a transcript created from the original marriage record. Most records will also include an image of the marriage register, which may reveal more information such as the names of any witnesses present. Transcripts will reveal the couples names, the date and location of the ceremony, their addresses and the names of their fathers.

Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Burials contains over 250,000 burial records from across all 32 counties of Ireland. The index was created from the National Library of Ireland’s (NLI) full Catholic parish registers collection and includes burial records from 338 parishes.

Catholic parishes did not keep thorough burial records until the early 1900s. Each record contains an image of the original burial register and a transcript of all the vital information. The detail found in each transcript can vary depending on the age and condition of the register, but most will include your ancestors name, address, date of death, burial date, and where they were laid to rest. A number of records will also reveal the cost of digging the grave and/or any donations to the church next to the deceased’s name.

Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Congregational Records is a collection of over 54,000 assorted church records including congregational records, confirmation records and lists of church subscribers. The Congregational records may be the smallest record set within the Irish parish registers collection but they are also the most unique. They feature lists of parishioners, lists of those who have donated to the church and confirmation records. In some parishes, local priests even created small censuses of the local residences across all religions.

Each record will contain both an image and a transcript of the original document. The subject of the records can vary wildly so we recommend viewing images to gather all the necessary information. The detail found in each transcript can vary widly but most will include your ancestor’s name, parish, diocese, county, the date of the event that was being recorded and a link to the original document.

Don’t forget to regularly check our dedicated Findmypast Friday page to keep up to date with all the latest additions.

About Findmypast

Findmypast (previously DC Thomson Family History) is a British-owned world leader in online genealogy. It has an unrivalled record of online innovation in the field of family history and 18 million registered users across its family of online brands, which includes Mocavo, Genes Reunited, The British Newspaper Archive amongst others.

Its lead brand, also called Findmypast, is a searchable online archive of over two billion family history records, from parish records and censuses to migration records, military collections, historical newspapers and lots more. For members around the world, the site is a crucial resource for building family trees and doing detailed historical research.